CS4397 dac

janos, the reason why you say your dac might be harsh sounding is that it may be running on a AC power supply...my experience of batteries is that they "soften" or take the harsh edge of everything....I have another dac not so heavily modded and I have no experience of listening fatigue at all, in fact I have a very hard job getting away from the hifi .I am even now looking at how to run a cd player of battery, it is not impractical if you use one with a large amp hour...If you connect a 6volt battery to the dac tho watch out for your sepc oscons they will be rated to 6volt ,most probably, and a new battery gives 6.5v...use a touch bulb to drain the battery down a little

Check please 1st: Is the original 5 V input of the board disconnected? If yes, give a +5 V input to the 7 pins inlet (pin is labeled, situated inside a white framed part which is close to the opt/sb/koax).

Also, check the R24 resistor (it is close to the optical inlet). You should see +5 V at the resistor (at the end closest to the label U3). Could sbody provide me please a full schematic of the board, where the parts are clearly labelled/seen?

janos I have tried to add the schematic to the post but its not having any of it,,,,google "lampizator lampucera" then scroll down the page ...but I am sure the diagram is not correct....check your mail as well

there is 5 volts at r24 and yes pin 7 on the power connector strip has 5volts

I have been comparing the working dac board to the one that has gone wrong....I think the receiver chip is malfunctioning....i have checked until i am blue in the face for silly mistakes but can find none....however the working dac has 1.65v dc on pins 10,11,12 of the 4397 chip...the silent board has 3.3 volts on 12 and 0.0v on 10 and 11......these receive data from the reciever chip so unless it has something to do with the mute or reset functions...the receiver chip must be blown.....luckily they are cheap on ebay not so true for the dac chip.....so I await the post

on my working dac it is impossible for me to measure the voltage on the "mute" pin 15 of the cs4397 chip....the silent dac reads 4v dc.....is this too low?Could anyone take a reading on theirs' ? I am sure the problem is in this area I have been really clean and tidy modding the board there is no reason for anything to be damaged....its got to be something not set up right

Hi all, I am inspired by this thread. Having recently come out of the closet and declared myself a tweaker (is there a better descriptor) and not just a builder of kits I am embarking on a lampucera based stand alone DAC. I am also perversely attracted to tubes and can see no harm in Lampization of this unit instead of usual opamp. I have not seen much discussion of this in this thread though and have not spotted it elsewhere.

I would like to replicate the boxed version here:

http://tapa.tk/mu/51818184-7ad8-ada1.jpg

So far I have ordered lampucera (on the fabled slow boat from china) and bits for basic board mod sans opamp. I now want to get rest of build list together and ordered for a bodger session in coming weeks.

The schematic on the site (http://www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/LAMPUCERA/CD DAC Lampucera lampizator.html)
shows a single tube whereas the final boxed version is clearly two tubes.

http://tapa.tk/mu/51818184-7bc6-2648.jpg

I am not sufficiently confident to work out what he has done here although I am wondering if the dual tube version is balanced, if so how does the wiring differ. Thoughts and guidance on this appreciated.

Has anyone else ventured down this route? As I said I do love my valves and am keen to bolt a couple in here....

Oh and while I am on does anyone know of a good source of nice chassis? Thanks

I have seen pics recently of someone in the UK who has done this mod, but at the moment I can't remember where it was!

I have one of these Dacs, but have not done this mod (yet!)

Rob.